Quotes about anybody

A collection of quotes on the topic of anybody, doing, people, thinking.

Harry Styles quote: “Does anybody like dolphins? Don’t go to SeaWorld.”

Quotes about anybody

“Does anybody like dolphins? Don’t go to SeaWorld.”

Harry Styles (1994) English singer, songwriter, and actor

Speaking at One Direction's concert in San Diego (9 July 2015) https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34123070

“I don't think anybody's necessarily ready for death. You can only hope that when it approaches, you feel like you've said what you wanted to say. Nobody wants to go out in mid-sentence.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Death, Hope, Feeling, Thinking

“Just keep moving forward and don't give a sh** about what anybody thinks. Do what you have to do, for you.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Variant: Just keep moving forward and don't give a shit about what anybody thinks. Do what you have to do, for you.

Thinking

“Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. LXVI
Following the Equator (1897)

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: A Room of One's Own / Three Guineas

“Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in the world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarly, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Third Notebook: Part Two
No Longer Human

People, World, Way, Understanding

“I have no advice for anybody; except to, you know, be awake enough to see where you are at any given time, and how that is beautiful, and has poetry inside. Even places you hate.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

Hate, Beauty, Time

“You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Unsourced in Musician's Little Book of Wisdom‎ (1996) by Scott E. Power, Quote 416.
Misattributed

Success, Hurtful, Feeling

“Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Variant: Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You do not have to have a college degree to serve. You do not have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

Love, Soul, Heart

“I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) American artist

Art

“Crazy. Karma is a bitch. Gets you every time. It's not good to wish bad on anybody. God sees everything!”

LeBron James (1984) American basketball player

LeBron James sees 'karma' in Cavs rout, Steve Ginsburg, ESPN, January 12, 2011 http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/truehoop/miamiheat/news/story?id=6014004, James on Twitter after the Cleveland Cavaliers lost 112–57 to the Los Angeles Lakers.

God, Time, Bitch

“I think art is the only thing that's spiritual in the world. And I refuse to forced to believe in other people's interpretations of God. I don't think anybody should be. No one person can own the copyright to what God means.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Variant: I think art is the only thing that's spirtual in the world. And I refuse to be forced to believe in other people's interpretations of God. I don't think anybody should be. No one person can own the copyright to what God means.

God, People, World, Art

“Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of who plays it is 80 percent.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

“Anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn't like yourself anymore. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best things she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing — the part of her that was clean.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved (1987), Ch. 26

Children, Beauty, Parting

“No matter what you do in your life, don’t you ever let anybody take your creative people away from you.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Context: Grace Jones said this to me when I met her. I washed her feet, and I looked up at her and she said, "No matter what you do in your life, don’t you ever let anybody take your creative people away from you." And what my creative friends always remind me of is they say, "Only value the opinion of those that you respect. And anyone that you don’t respect, pay no mind to their opinion about you or anything else." And that’s how I live my life. If I worried about everything that everyone said, I would not be a good artist.

Life, People

“All my lovers asked me why they couldn't replace Mary, but it's simply impossible. The only friend I've got is Mary and I don't want anybody else. To me, she was my common-law wife. To me, it was a marriage. We believe in each other, that's enough for me.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

On Mary Austin, a long time companion, and the inheritor of most of his estate, as quoted in "For A Song : The Mercury that's rising in rock is Freddie the satiny seductor of Queen" by Fred Hauptfuhrer, in People magazine (5 December 1977) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Group_-_12-05-1977_-_People

Marriage, Law, Lovers

“Even if you're sweeping floors or painting ceilings, do it better than anybody in the world, no matter what it is that you do. Be the best at it, and have a respect for others, and be proud of yourself.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

“The dictionary is the only book that's not required to reference anybody.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Books

“The best part about being alone is that you really don't have to answer to anybody. You do what you want.”

Justin Timberlake (1981) American singer and actor

Parting

“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

For Bestfriend, Nature, Suffering, Success

“If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

“What we believed in was responsible majority rule as opposed to irresponsible majority rule, and I stand by that. I think it's important that before you give a person a [right to] vote you ensure that his roots go down [and] that he's part of the whole structure of the country. So I stand by what I've said, and I think we can substantiate the fact that the things we did were to the benefit of the black people of our country more so than anybody else. And I challenge anybody to disagree with that.”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Ian Smith - A Bit Of A Rebel, Ian Smith

People, Thinking, Parting, Personality

“The electron: may it never be of any use to anybody!”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

A popular toast or slogan at J. J. Thomson's Cavendish Laboratory in the first years of the 1900s, as quoted in Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Volume 35 (1951), p. 251.
Attributed

“Sometimes I am tempted to believe that I am better than anybody because I know Him. And then I remember that, I don't know him because I was smart enough to figure out some riddle. And I don't know him because I was good enough to ascend into heaven on my own and shake hands with him and meet him. Of all the things that make God awesome, the most awesome thing in the world that I can imagine from a god is that one who would be holy, and one that would be just,… and one that would be innocent and beautiful, and would have no need of me… that someone like that could love me is amazing. And uh, that does not make me a good person; but it makes Him a great God!”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Louisville, Kentucky http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/louisville-kentucky-jun2594.html (June 25, 1994) In Concert

Love, God, World, Beauty

“I started painting as a hobby when I was little. I didn't know I had any talent. I believe talent is just a pursued interest. Anybody can do what I do.”

Bob Ross (1942–1995) American painter, art instructor, and television host

Cathy Hainer (October 28, 1993) "PBS' stroke of serenity / Bob Ross brings brush of zen to 'Joy of Painting'", USA Today, p. 3D.

Painting

“Whatever has happened to Stalin, gentlemen, is a question for the Soviet Union.… You are responsible, and your forebears, for 60 million to 100 million black people dying in the slave ships and on the plantations, and don’t ask me about anybody, please.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

HUAC Testimony

People, Question

“There's no future without the past and anybody who doesn't really understand where jazz has come from has no right to try to direct where it's going.”

Cannonball Adderley (1928–1975) American jazz alto saxophonist

Interviewed by the "Chicago SEED", November 1968

Understanding, Past, Future

“Everyone thought I was going to die like a year later, they didn't know. So I helped educate sports, and then the world, that a man living with HIV can play basketball. He's not going to give it to anybody by playing basketball.”

Magic Johnson (1959) American basketball player

Then & Now: Magic Johnson http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/01/17/cnn25.tan.johnson/index.html

World, Education, Sport, Help

“I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was—wrapped up in the arts, the natural (not social) sciences, the externals of history & antiquarianism, the abstract academic phases of philosophy, & so on—all the one-sided standard lore to which, according to the traditions of the dying order, a liberal education was limited. God! the things that were left out—the inside facts of history, the rational interpretation of periodic social crises, the foundations of economics & sociology, the actual state of the world today … & above all, the habit of applying disinterested reason to problems hitherto approached only with traditional genuflections, flag-waving, & callous shoulder-shrugs! All this comes up with humiliating force through an incident of a few days ago—when young Conover, having established contact with Henneberger, the ex-owner of WT, obtained from the latter a long epistle which I wrote Edwin Baird on Feby. 3, 1924, in response to a request for biographical & personal data. Little Willis asked permission to publish the text in his combined SFC-Fantasy, & I began looking the thing over to see what it was like—for I had not the least recollection of ever having penned it. Well …. I managed to get through, after about 10 closely typed pages of egotistical reminiscences & showing-off & expressions of opinion about mankind & the universe. I did not faint—but I looked around for a 1924 photograph of myself to burn, spit on, or stick pins in! Holy Hades—was I that much of a dub at 33 … only 13 years ago? There was no getting out of it—I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centred, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better! That earlier illness had kept me in seclusion, limited my knowledge of the world, & given me something of the fatuous effusiveness of a belated adolescent when I finally was able to get around more in 1920, is hardly much of an excuse. Well—there was nothing to be done … except to rush a note back to Conover & tell him I'd dismember him & run the fragments through a sausage-grinder if he ever thought of printing such a thing! The only consolation lay in the reflection that I had matured a bit since '24. It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33—but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Catherine L. Moore (7 February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 407-408
Non-Fiction, Letters

God, Age, World, Education

“You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

Life, Way, Parting

“Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. …Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? — Every, every minute?”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

"Emily Webb"
Our Town (1938)
Context: I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back — up the hill — to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths... and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.... Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? — Every, every minute?... I'm ready to go back... I should have listened to you. That's all human beings are! Just blind people.

Life

“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Variant: I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

Way, Hell

“The only moral lesson which is suited for a child--the most important lesson for every time of life--is this: 'Never hurt anybody.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Source: Emile or On Education

Life, Time, Hurt

“I need someone physically stronger than me…. I am always on top. It's really unfortunate. I am begging for the man that can put me on the bottom. Or the woman. Anybody that can take me down.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

“You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

“I've always followed my father's advice: he told me, first to always keep my word and, second, to never insult anybody unintentionally. If I insult you, you can be goddamn sure I intend to. And, third, he told me not to go around looking for trouble.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

“What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Parting

“History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

Way, History

“You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change.
-Atticus Finch”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Change

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Part Two, Ch. 4
On the Road (1957)

Star, Night

“This instinctive repulsion which tradespeople inspire in men of sensitive feeling is one of the very rare consolations for being so impoverished which are given to those of us who don’t sell anything to anybody.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

Men, Feeling

“I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I'd cry for a week.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Tear, Cry, Flying

“Records are always made to be broken no matter what they are. Anybody can do anything that they set their mind to.”

Michael Phelps (1985) American swimmer

Upon winning his eighth straight Gold medal and having set his eighth straight Olympic record, as well as his seventh world record, in his eight events in the 2008 Olympic Games, 17 August 2008. (Source: [Phelps wins historic eighth gold medal, CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SPORT/08/17/phelps.history.eight.golds/])

“Traditionally, art has been for the select few. We have been brainwashed to believe that Michaelangelo had to pat you on the head at birth. Well, we show people that anybody can paint a picture that they're proud of. It may never hang in the Smithsonian, but it will certainly be something that they'll hang in their home and be proud of. And that's what it's all about.”

Bob Ross (1942–1995) American painter, art instructor, and television host

Linda Shrieves (July 7, 1990) "Bob Ross Uses His Brush to Spread Paint and Joy", The Orlando Sentinel, p. E1.

People, Art, Home, Birth

“I still don't know why they banned me" she says. "I said to them, 'What did I do? I never killed anybody. I was never arrested for anything bad, so why can't I go home?.”

Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) South African singer and civil rights activist

Interview with Robin Denselow (May 2008)
Source: http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2280144,00.html, Robin Denselow talks to African superstar and activist Miriam Makeba, The Guardian, 15, London, 16 May 2008, 18 November 2010

Home

“From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot! It is the government's duty to put down any opposition to this really free society with a firm hand, and I hope they will always do it, for I already regard myself at home here. This is home to me. I feel more kinship to the Russian people under their new society than I ever felt anywhere else. It is obvious that there is no terror here, that all the masses of every race are contented and support their government.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

" 'I Am at Home' Says Robeson at Reception in Soviet Union http://www.mltranslations.org/Miscellaneous/RobesonSU.htm", Daily Worker (15 January 1935)

People, Hope, Feeling, Home

“It is not a good symptom that hanging should still be the accepted form of capital punishment in this country. Hanging is a barbarous, inefficient way of killing anybody, and at least one fact about it—quite widely known, I believe—is so obscene as to be almost unprintable.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please" column in The Tribune (15 November 1946) http://alexpeak.com/twr/oocp/ "As I Please" (1943–1947)

Way, Country

“Barcelona gave me everything, they took a chance on me when nobody else would. I never have any desire to play for anybody else, I will be here for as long as they want me.”

Lionel Messi (1987) Argentine association football player

Interview with ShortList, 2015 http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/sport/lionel-messi-talks-champions-league-copa-america

Chance

“THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Lecture: "Off the Time Track" (June 1952) as quoted in Journal of Scientology issue 18-G, reprinted in Technical Volumes of Dianetics & Scientology Vol. 1, p. 418.

People, Lie, Books, Way

“One could say I was goofy somewhere, and maybe even outed someone, but not that I was an agent. Not that I wanted to betray anybody. (…) I swear, and damn me if I lie.”

Lech Wałęsa (1943) Polish politician, Nobel Peace Prize winner, former President of Poland

Można powiedzieć, że byłem gdzieś niezręczny, może nawet kogoś wsypałem, ale nie to, że byłem agentem. Nie to, że chciałem kogoś zdradzić (...) Przysięgam i niech mnie szlag trafi, jeśli kłamię. From the IV Copernican Debate at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, after Gazeta.pl http://miasta.gazeta.pl/torun/1,48723,6510083,Walesa__Przysiegam__ze_nie_bylem_agentem.html and TVN24 http://www.tvn24.pl/1,1596041,druk.html

Lie

“Anybody who's ever been broken up with, or had their heart stepped on or ripped out of them; you question everything you've based your whole life on. It's like, is anything real? Cause nothing 's more real than that, and now it's gone.”

Kristen Stewart (1990) American actress

YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VIPZ3dHD4Y&feature=player_embedded

Life, Question, Heart

“We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God's children. And that we don't have to live like we are forced to live.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

Men, God, Children, People

“As a nation-state, Iran has no problems with anybody. As a vehicle for the Khomeinist ideology it has problems with everybody, starting with the Iranian people. The Khomeinist regime makes no secret of its intense hatred for Iranian culture, which it claims has roots in “the age of ignorance” (jahiliyyah). To admire this regime because of Iranian culture is like admiring Hitler for Goethe and Beethoven and praising Stalin for Pushkin and Tchaikovsky. This regime has executed tens of thousands of Iranians, driven almost 6 million into exile, and deprived the nation of its basic freedoms. It has also killed more Americans, often through surrogates, than al Qaeda did on 9/11. Not a single day has passed without this regime holding some American hostages. Iran as a nation is a solid friend of America. Iran as a vehicle for the Khomeinist revolution is an eternal enemy of “The Great Satan.” The only realistic strategy for the United States would be to help it stop being the Islamic Republic and become Iran again. President Obama’s policy, however, points in the opposite direction. He has made it harder for the Iranian people to regain their human rights.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

What US leaders have never understood about Iran http://nypost.com/2015/07/19/what-us-leaders-have-never-understood-about-iran/, New York Post (July 19, 2015). New York Post

People, Secret, Age, Problem

“If the development by the enemy as well as by us of thermonuclear weapons could have been averted, I think we would be in a somewhat safer world today than we are…I do not think we want to argue technical questions here, and I do not think it is very meaningful for me to speculate as to how we would have responded had the technical picture at that time been more as it was later.
However, it is my judgment in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb. I do not think anybody opposed making it; there were some debates about what to do with it after it was made. I cannot very well imagine if we had known in late 1949 what we got to know by early 1951 that the tone of our report would have been the same.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

Oppenheimer testifying in his defense in his 1954 security hearings, discussing the American reaction to the first successful Russian test of an atomic bomb and the debate whether to develop the "super" hydrogen bombs with vastly higher explosive power; from volume II of the Oppenheimer hearing transcripts http://www.osti.gov/includes/opennet/includes/Oppenheimer%20hearings/Vol%20II%20Oppenheimer.pdf, pg 95/266 (emphasis added)

World, Way, Imagination, Question

“So they didn't let anybody else off. I can't live anymore, they've done me. Auschwitz was just a child's play.”

Witold Pilecki (1901–1948) World War II concentration camp leader and resistor

Having just been sentenced to death, 1948.
Source: Ewa K. Czaczkowska, Chcą beatyfikacji Pileckiego, Rzeczpospolita. Nr 249 (8150), 24 October 2008, p. A9

“"What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?"
This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.
Richard continued, "What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself."”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

Stupidity, Way, Idea, Understanding

“I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Rolling Stone (1976)
1970s
Context: I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright... Or maybe "stupid" is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I... And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots.

People, Stupidity, World, Peace

“If anybody tries to play the game of "follow the guru" with me, they will be lost, for they will learn that I am just as confused as they are. The difference may be that I know it.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Living, Loving, and Learning (1982)
Context: About two years ago a young lady came into my office, and I knew immediately something was wrong. Her eyes were kind of glazed, and her head was nodding, and I asked, "What's the matter" She replied, "Oh, Dr. Buscaglia, in order to get enough courage to come to see you, I had to drink a whole bottle of Ripple! And I think I am going to be sick!" Imagining... having to drink a bottle of Ripple to summon up the courage to come to see me. All I do is put my hands out and say, "Hi." I cover their hands with mine and lead them into my office, and I can see a look of panic on their faces, "What's he going to do to me?" I am not going to do anything to you! I just want you to know that I cry, too, and I feel, too, and I care, too, and I don't know everything, too, and therefore, we can start with a common frame of reference — human being to human being. If anybody tries to play the game of "follow the guru" with me, they will be lost, for they will learn that I am just as confused as they are. The difference may be that I know it. A Buddhist teacher once said to me, "Why do you keep moving? You are already there." And all of a sudden it occurred to me — my goodness, I am!

Game, Learning

“Let us assume that the artist does not OWE anybody anything: nevertheless, it is painful to see how, by retiring into his self-made worlds or the spaces of his subjective whims, he CAN surrender the real world into the hands of men who are mercenary, if not worthless, if not insane.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: Let us not violate the RIGHT of the artist to express exclusively his own experiences and introspections, disregarding everything that happens in the world beyond. Let us not DEMAND of the artist, but — reproach, beg, urge and entice him — that we may be allowed to do. After all, only in part does he himself develop his talent; the greater part of it is blown into him at birth as a finished product, and the gift of talent imposes responsibility on his free will. Let us assume that the artist does not OWE anybody anything: nevertheless, it is painful to see how, by retiring into his self-made worlds or the spaces of his subjective whims, he CAN surrender the real world into the hands of men who are mercenary, if not worthless, if not insane.

Men, Pain, World

“Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy, because the belief system becomes the barrier for your eyes, you cannot see the truth.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth (1989) YouTube video of the lecture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBEIeRSLb8k Context: It was good of Friedrich Nietzsche to declare God dead — I declare that he has never been born. It is a created fiction, an invention, not a discovery. Do you understand the difference between invention and discovery? A discovery is about truth, an invention is manufactured by you. It is man-manufactured fiction. Certainly it has given consolation, but consolation is not the right thing! Consolation is opium. It keeps you unaware of the reality, and life is flowing past you so quickly — seventy years will be gone soon. Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy, because the belief system becomes the barrier for your eyes, you cannot see the truth. The very desire to find the truth disappears. But in the beginning it is bitter if all your belief systems are taken away from you. The fear and anxiety which you have been suppressing for millennia, which is there, very alive, will surface immediately. No God can destroy it, only the search for truth and the experience of truth — not a belief — is capable of healing all your wounds, of making you a whole being. And the whole person is the holy person to me.

Truth

“I don't know which side is anybody on any more. I don't really care. There is a moment when we have to transcend the side we're on and understand that we are creatures of a higher order.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Introducing "If It Be Your Will"
Warsaw concert (1985)
Context: I don't know which side is anybody on any more. I don't really care. There is a moment when we have to transcend the side we're on and understand that we are creatures of a higher order. That doesn't mean that I don't wish you courage in your struggle. There is on both sides of the struggle men of good will. That is important to remember. On both sides of the struggle, some struggling for freedom, some struggling for safety and solemn testimony of that unbroken faith which binds generations one to another I sing this song, "If It Be Your Will"

Understanding

“I'll go as deep in my pockets as any man to help any guy that needs help. I can't stand to see anybody hungry or cold or helpless.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

Guy, Help

“Anybody who wishes to go beyond the free-will of another person is already practising narcissistic characteristics.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Personality

“You can't copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.”

Billie Holiday book Lady Sings the Blues

Variant: Everyones got to be different. You can't copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. And without feeling, whatever you do amounts to nothing.
Source: Lady Sings the Blues

People, Music, Way, Feeling

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

Family, Forgiveness

“Everyone has his own philosophy that doesn't hold good for anybody else.”

Kóbó Abe book The Woman in the Dunes

Source: The Woman in the Dunes

“Thank heaven I don't inherit God from anybody! I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. He's kind and sympathetic and imaginative and forgiving and understanding - and He has a sense of humor.”

Jean Webster (1876–1916) American novelist

God, Imagination, Forgiveness, Understanding

“The most important thing for everyone in Gringolandia is to have ambition and become 'somebody,' and frankly, I don't have the least ambition to become anybody.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

“How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or seen anybody die?”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Love, Life, Baby

“The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

“The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Variant: You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.
Source: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story

Life

“But let me tell you this: sometimes at night, when I look up at the stars, an see the whole sky jus laid out there, don't you think I ain't rememberin it all. I still got dreams like anybody else, an ever so often, I am thinkin about how things might of been. An then, all of a sudden, I'm forty, fifty, sixty years ole, you know?
Well, so what? I may be a idiot, but most of the time, anyway, I tried to do the right thing-- an dreams is jus dreams, ain't they? So whatever else has happened, I am figgerin this: I can always look back an say, at least I ain't led no hum-drum life.
You know what I mean?”

Winston Groom Forrest Gump

Source: Forrest Gump

Life, Dreams, Star, Thinking

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right — stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Reported as an inscription quoting Lincoln in an English college in The Baptist Teacher for Sunday-school Workers : Vol. 36 (August 1905), p. 483. The portion beginning with "stand with anybody..." is from the 16 October 1854 Peoria speech..
Posthumous attributions

Light, Parting

“Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)

Parting

“It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

Change

“I was brought up to respect my elders, so now I don't have to respect anybody.”

George Burns (1896–1996) American comedian, actor, and writer

Birthday

“You're all geniuses and you're all beautiful. You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace. Think peace, live peace, and breathe peace and you'll get it as soon as you like.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Statement to the press in July 1969 after the release of the Plastic Ono Band's single "Give Peace a Chance", as quoted in The Beatles: An Oral History by David Pritchard and Alan Lysaght (1998) New York: Hyperion. ISBN: 0786864362. OCLC: 39093547. p. 285.
Context: It was just a gradual development over the years. Last year was "All You Need Is Love." This year it's "Give Peace a Chance." Remember love. The only hope for any of us is peace. Violence begets violence. If you want to get peace, you can get it as soon as you like if we all pull together. You're all geniuses and you're all beautiful. You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace. Think peace, live peace, and breathe peace and you'll get it as soon as you like. Okay?

Peace, Beauty, Thinking

“Did you ever see anybody so disgusting: said lightning to thunder, "never," growled thunder, "let's give him the works.”

William Steig Shrek!

Source: Shrek!

“I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Source: Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Love, Feeling

“Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

Thinking

“Our Job is not to make young women grateful. It is to make the ungrateful so they keep going. Gratitude never radicalized anybody”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Women, Gratitude

“the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Variant: The best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them.

Understanding

“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I

History

“Ach, people are always telling us not to do things" said Rob Anybody, "that's how we ken the most interesting things to do.”

Terry Pratchett book Wintersmith

Source: Wintersmith

People

“I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

People, Music, Time

“The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Whatever anybody says, the most important thing in life is to be happy.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Life, Happiness

“Confusion is a good state to be in. It means you are looking, constantly looking. People ask me, "Why do you confuse us like this?" I want you to understand, if you can be confused by anybody, it means you do not know. If you are fanatical, you cannot be confused. Or if you are realized, you cannot be confused. Between ignorance and enlightenment is a very thin line. But they are worlds apart.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Of Mystics & Mistakes

People, World, Understanding

“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Variant: Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

love, Cute, Heart Touching, Romantic

“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Carlin on Campus (1984)

Funny

“I think the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth. The sense of independence and security is very sweet.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Way, Girl, Thinking, Sense

“I like you, but not too much. I don’t want to like anybody too much.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

“Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all be pure”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“You can take pride in yourself without comparing yourself to anybody else. If you run your race and be the best that you can be, then you can feel good about yourself.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Feeling

“I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Life, Problem

“I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

“Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

Source: Principle-Centered Leadership (1992), Ch. 11
Context: Unless we exercise our power to choose wisely, our actions will be determined by conditions. Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Freedom

“Anybody will do for you, but not for me. I must have.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States